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MH17 crash site stripped, looted: What can we know?

Grief turns to fury as it becomes clear evidence has been contaminated beyond repair and relatives are still denied the bodies of their loved ones.

A toy lies at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine Four days after MH17 was shot out of the sky, international investigators still have had only limited access to the crash site, hindered by pro-Russia fighters who control the territory in eastern Ukraine. Outrage over the delays in returning bodies to their home countries and the tampering of evidence at the site was building worldwide, especially in the Netherlands, where most of the victims were from. (Dmitry Lovetsky / AP)

In the most emotional session the UN Security Council has seen in years, the Dutch and Australian foreign ministers joined a chorus of voices Monday demanding unfettered access to the downed Malaysia Airlines plane in which nearly 300 people died.

The Australian-sponsored resolution passed unanimously, with Russia joining in the vote. But as evidence mounted that the plane was shot down by a missile fired by Russian-backed rebels over embattled eastern Ukraine — while the rebels barred investigators from the crash site for several days and stalled the removal of bodies — grief turned to anger in the West.

The prospect that the evidence is now contaminated beyond repair, and the bodies of victims kept from their loved ones, infuriated countries that lost the greatest number of citizens.

Netherlands Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans told the Security Council that there were “very disturbing reports of bodies being moved about and looted for their possessions. To my dying day I will not understand that it took so much time for rescue workers to be allowed to do their difficult jobs and that human remains should be used in a political game.”

Lack of access and contamination of the crash scene raised immediate red flags.

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“In the last 12 hours there was footage of cranes lifting pieces of wreckage and shifting them,” said Manchester-based aviation security expert Chris Yates. “We’ve already seen bodies removed and loaded onto rail cars. The key thing in a crash is for investigators to have unfettered access.”

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As the United Nations Security Council condemns the downing of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, Russia says Kiev is exploiting the plane disaster.(Reuters)

Russia maintains that it was not responsible for the crash, and that the fault lay with Ukraine’s military assault against the separatist rebels, who created the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine, supported by Russia.

But the U.S. and Ukraine insist there is “powerful” evidence that the rebels shot down the plane, including videos and transcripts of intercepted phone calls and emails. In a reported call said to have been made 20 minutes after the crash, a rebel commander boasted of shooting down a plane, saying: “It’s smoking.” Shortly afterward, a panicky militant who had viewed the wreckage said it was “100 per cent a passenger aircraft.”

Russian reports initially said that Ukraine had shot down the plane. But the trajectory of the aircraft alone — from west to east across Ukrainian air space — would make that implausible.

“Airlines passing over any country pay an overflight fee to use the air space,” says Yates. “Would you really shoot down somebody who was feeding money into your depleted coffers? Right afterwards nobody was flying over Ukraine.”

New York University Russia expert Mark Galeotti said the reported presence of unidentified men who sifted through the crime scene but did not belong to the rebel bands raises suspicions about the Kremlin’s role.

“These were professional-looking people who seemed very serious about what they were doing, and not thuggish looters,” he said from Moscow.

Can contaminated evidence still answer the crucial questions on the crash?

“If pieces of the rocket are there, they will have markings to show where they were manufactured and serial numbers that can be traced to individual stockpiles,” says Peter Bouckaert, a veteran war crimes investigator and Human Rights Watch emergencies director.

“These deadly weapons are carefully registered and monitored. Serial numbers alone could discover whether they’re from a Ukrainian stockpile or provided by Russia.”

The airplane’s flight data recorders disappeared for days, and the rebels handed them over to Malaysia on Monday. They could provide data on the plane’s position during the strike and help in tracking the path of the missile.

Finding a definitive answer to whether Russia, or simply the rebels, are responsible will be difficult as well as politically volatile.

“The Buk (missile) is a very sophisticated piece of equipment, and people firing it would have to have training,” says missile expert Steve Zaloga, of the Teal Group in Virginia.

The Russian military could have supplied the expertise. But “if the missile battery was seized from Ukraine, Ukrainian troops could have been coerced into teaching the rebels to use the system, or could simply have deserted.”

A video apparently showing a missile battery moving over the Russian border after the crash adds to suspicions that Moscow aided the attack.

Forensic examination of the rapidly decomposing bodies could still yield some evidence, says Bouckaert.

“Every person sits in a different seat, and by reconstructing different pieces of the plane and where they sat, you should be able to see where the explosion happened.”

He adds: “It appears from all the available information that this was a terrible mistake, and they were hoping to shoot down a military plane. Intent does matter. But there can be significant responsibility attached to the persons who committed the act.”

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